Advertisement
We arrived in Cusco 10 days ago, from Lima. We treated ourselves to a cushy bus again and actually had a good nights sleep on it....thanks to some Xanex of course. Cusco was having a festival for Winter Solstice...to the Inca Sun God. As we have pretty much managed to miss very festival, party, or public celebration of any kind on this continent we were quite excited. Accommodation was hard to come by though. So the festival was lots of dancers and performers in the main square and then a 20 minute walk to some nearby ruins for the main event. Then we were going to party the night away in a local Irish Bar. Great. What we hadn´t planned on is that Cusco is 11300 ft above sea level and although neither of us suffer from severe altitude sickness this can really get you down. You are told to take it easy, eat small amounts often and drink very little...ah what do they know, clearly these are rules for silly people who have never been anywhere before.
Our festival day turned into getting up late, sitting in the square panting with a stabbing pain in our foreheads, feeling like we
These woman make money by
dragging a lama around and having people take photos had each drunk a half bottle of cheap vodka the night before. The thoughts of adding to the pain by walking up a steep hill had gone out the window...Inca gods aren´t that interesting anyway! We comforted ourselves knowing we had a night of partying ahead...yeah, that was until we decided to have a fair few drinks and then eat a decent size meal at 9 o´clock. Altitude doesn´t like you doing this. So at 10:30pm after a couple of dizzy spells we had to leave the bar with swollen bellies, take some motillium and climb into bed. Altitude 1 : Know-it-all-travellers 0.
After 3 days and some aclimatising it was time to do the thing that all travellers folk to here for, The Inca Trail, or more fondly know among locals as the Gringo Trail. 4 Days of hiking and sleeping in tents for a mere 500 bucks didn´t appeal to us so we opted for an alternative 4 day Inca Jungle Trek for 180. Now just for those who may not know..a little history...The Inca trails were a road system used for communication and logistics. They strected from Cusco as far as Quito in the North and Santiago
in the south and west to the coast. Incas did not have wheeled transportation or horses so the roads were used by people on foot. As far as there communication/postal system was concerned they had Chaskis who were like relay runners to transport their ´post´. Messages were in the form of multi coloured knotted wool or rope..each colour and size of knot having a different meaning or they could be by spoken word. They reckon that a message could travel at an average of 7km per hour. So our trip involved hiking along some of these trails.
There were 11 people in our group plus a guide. Our trek began at 7:30am when we were picked up and drove up a 4600 metre mountain for our day of downhill mountain biking. 64kms and a decent of about 3000metres of amazing scenary, hairy hairpin turns and sudden drops. As it was high up and first thing in the morning it was really really cold but we soon heated up. The last 2 hours bit was on a gravel pot holed road which was pretty hardcore. We had one puncture and four falls, and very sore arses. It was a good prelude
to the Death Road. And some good warnings as well....breaks and gears are super important when your dealing with drops into the abyss.
The second day was when the hiking began. I thought this was going to be ok after the Volcano hike...but no. It was really hot, and there was a good bit of steep up hills. We all found it particularily tough. But the only thing that kept us going was the amazing views around every corner. This part of the trek was on one of the original inca trails. While we´re all almost passing out you can´t help thinking about the guys who used to run this. Apart from the heat and the hills some of it is along really narrow ledges with some very very long drops. Maybe at one point the path was about 12inches wide! I also had the added pleasure of encountering spider alley. Nobody had warned me about this and having to duck under massive webs and very large evil looking aracnids. Very upsetting. Poor Col nearly lost two fingers I was gripping his hand so hard as he dragged me under all of them. But we covered about 16km in the
end and the guide promised me I wouldn´t have to deal with that again. On this night we had an extra reward in that we hiked as far as some natural hot springs. Surrounded by mountains, exhausted and sweaty, we couldn´t wait to jump straight in. They were gorgeous and the perfect treat from tired mussels. So we were raring to go again.
Each night we stayed in a hostel and had dinner in a restaurant....all basic but good. This second night we also went to a club and had a few drinks. Really good laugh. The club we were in had a pole in the middle of the floor. No guesses as to who was swinging around it within 15 minutes of downing the first drink. Stupid dancing, dance offs and lots of laughs, we wrecked the place.
With sore heads we tackled the third day....bad idea, as we had to do 22km!! Just as hot and just as high. The last 8km were walking along train tracks. Sounds good...no it was really difficult cos you have to keep looking down and then every time we stopped when you look up at the looming mountains all around they actually
Festival day
Traditional dressed girls with lambs look like they are moving. Really trippy. So very dizzy and very very tired we arrived at our last location Aguas Calientes. This is the town at the base of Machu Picchu. We went for dinner had a few drinks. We had to get up at 3:30am to make our way up the steps to the ruins. There is a limited number of people allowed on Wanu Picchu which is the big pointy mountain you see in all the pics. People climb this for the view of all of Machu Picchu. But after 2 hours sleep, and almost 9000 footsteps (one of the girls had a step counter on her phone) up some very big steep steps to get to the ruins, when we were asked did we want to climb the 80 degree face of the other mountain you could hear our laughter mixed with some sobbing echoing around the ranges for miles.
We did our guided tour for 2 hours...we learned nothing cause we were so cool from being drowned in sweat the chattering of our teeth made it difficult to hear what he was saying. Once the sun rose and we melted a bit we got some
good snaps and legged it back down the steps and back to the town for pizza. We had done it! Stinka trail was complete...another one to cross of the list. We have both made a vow to get fit.
All in all it was really good fun, challenging but fun and we ended up in a really good group of people...everyone got on. We´re all going to go to Bolivia together tomorrow. As I may have mentioned there have been a lot of protests here between the local farmers and the police and government over tourism plans, so the roads to Puno in the south have been blocked. As a result we are flying over them tomorrow and heading to Lake Titicaca and Copacabana and the Isla del Sol.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.108s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 11; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0645s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Gar
non-member comment
Hola
Inca trail sounds amazing guys, well done! Check out my pics of Rock Werchter '09, there's a few of me in a red straw hat not unlike the local you snapped above : ) RW was brilliant by the way. Not as mental as last year, but it would take some serious festival to top that one right? Alot of really good acts and the sun split the skies for most of it too. It's 2 weeks to Trev's wedding in Poland now, should be a good bit of craic. Was at Suzi Salam's 30th last night in a cool place called The Sycamore in temple bar last night. Really cool spot, but way over packed. Was a really good laugh though. Am wrecked tired as I was at a party in the northside afterwards and then earlier was recording some demo stuff with the lads in my music room. Can't wait to get down to Galway to do the recordings in mid August. Once that's done and dusted we're doing a gig up in Aaron's gaff in Baltinglass and we're hoping to play the hard Working Class Heroes festival this year. Fingers crossed! Have a blast in Bolivia ; ) Love, Gar